3: A Kiss is Just

Somehow we all survived fifth grade. There was a party at Brenda's house at the end of the school year. It was the first time I'd ever been invited to a party. Well, she invited most everybody in our homeroom, but still ... It was like being somebody. Rachel and Whitney stayed close by me through the entire party and I got up to bat with both of them. I never got to first, though.

"Hey."

"Hey, yourself," I said as Joanne stuck her head above the floor of the hayloft. I was escaping up there from Betts. I had enough of chemistry in the attic for a while. Betts had girlfriends in the house and I was told in no uncertain terms to get my pervy butt away from them. It was going to be a long night. I might just stay up here. Joanne hauled herself up and all of a sudden I felt like I was ten feet tall. She came to see me!

"You survived fifth and next year you'll be kings."

"Yeah. It was cool. I've got friends."

"Good. I was worried about you. You know, of course, that after sixth grade, you'll be back at the bottom of the heap again. It will be like first grade. At least it was for me. With Junior and Senior High in the same building, you'll be looking up at everyone. I thought I'd never make it through seventh grade. Your sister was no help. As a freshman, she could only bully the junior highs. At least next year the rat bastard Drew will be at the bottom. See how he likes polishing some senior's shoes."

"They make you do that?"

"Only if they don't like you. I didn't have to do anything like that. I don't think you will, either."

"If there's a shoe to be licked, I'll be the one hoping he didn't step in dog-poop," I said.

"You did good this year," she said. "Did anyone give you shit?"

"I was always surrounded by Carl and Doug and the fabulous five."

"How lucky can you get? Five pretty girls to pal around with?"

"Yeah. But I didn't get to first base. I get so antsy when I'm with them sometimes that I have to just go to the bathroom and pee." I laughed. I couldn't believe I'd just told Joanne that. I hadn't even told the guys.

"You mean nobody even kissed you?" Joanne asked. She sounded really surprised.

"Why would anybody kiss me? I'm just their dress-up doll."

"Well yes, but they kiss their dolls. Believe me. I still do."

"Really?"

"Do you know how to kiss?" she asked.

"How would I know that?" I asked.

"Okay. Well, this is just because we're friends and you need to know this. So, no girl—well, mostly no girls—will start a kiss. If she's holding your hand, she's telling you that you could kiss her if you wanted. She just can't say that. It would be so much easier if we could just tell a boy we like, 'It's okay to kiss me now.' But no. Then we'd get called easy. It's so unfair."

"Have you ever been kissed, Joanne?"

"Yeah, sure." I tried not to get pissed off. She said it like it was no big deal. Just the thought of someone else kissing her made my stomach hurt. Well, my stomach hurt anyway. That's why I was in the barn. Betts had punched me because I saw her come out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel. That was before the other girls came over. I mean I was just in the hall when she came out of the bathroom. She saw me and called me a pervert and slugged me in the stomach. The damned bitch. I can't wait till she leaves home. "Look, I'll show you." My eyes got big.

"Really?"

"Yeah. So we're out on a date or something. Like at a party."

"I was at Brenda's party with Whitney and Rachel."

"Were you holding hands with one of them?"

"Both. At different times."

"Sorry I didn't think about this before, but I've been kind of busy. So you're holding hands." Joanne took my hand in hers. It was different than holding hands with Whitney or Rachel. There was a kind of tingle that went through my arm and right down my spine. This was good enough. We could just stay like this for a long, long time. "Holding hands is like the first step. A girl will let you put your arm around her and it doesn't mean anything. But if she lets you hold her hand, that's something. It's more ... intimate. It takes two, you know?"

All I could do was nod my head.

"I like holding your hand, Joanne. I like it a lot."

"Yeah. It's too bad you aren't in the same grade as me. But we can still practice. So if she's holding your hand, like I'm holding yours, it probably means it will be okay to kiss her."

"Probably? How do I know?"

"Sometimes a girl holds a guy's hands just to keep them under control. If you've been trying to touch her, well, she probably just wants to keep your hands away from anyplace else." Joanne paused a second and looked into my eyes. "You wouldn't do that would you, Brian? I mean touch a girl who didn't want to be touched?"

"Hell no," I said. "I have enough trouble with people touching me. Or punching me."

"I didn't think you would. It's important to a girl to know that you won't try to make her do something she really doesn't want to. So. You're holding her hand and it's just the two of you. That's important. Kissing the first time needs to be private. You don't do it in front of your friends. Maybe that's what didn't work at the party. Were there always people around?" I nodded. "Well, if they really wanted to, they could have led you someplace where there wasn't anyone. But maybe it just wasn't right for then. So if we're alone or at least can't be seen, and I'm holding your hand, then it's okay to try a kiss."

"You mean like we are right now?" I laughed, looking around at the hayloft.

"Well, yeah. Except I can't kiss you because you're not in my grade. So you'll have to practice on your own. Use your arm. Just softly kiss it. If you get it wet or hurt it, it's not right." She demonstrated on her arm. I felt pretty silly, but having Joanne teach me was pretty exciting, too. "You'd probably start by just leaning over and kissing my cheek. And then if she looks straight at you, that means she's ready for a little more. If she turns her head away, you stop."

I tried kissing my arm again and looked to see if I'd slobbered. I guessed I'd only practice this after I washed from now on.

"That's good. I'm not saying it was perfect, because it just won't be perfect the first time. The next time you kiss her—maybe on your next date—it will be easier and she won't pull away or anything." I did it again. "I don't think you'll have any problem from there. Just make sure to keep your lips soft and don't push too hard."

Joanne stood up and headed for the ladder down from the hayloft. Then she turned around and gave me a quick kiss right on the lips. She giggled and headed down the ladder. I sat there until it was my bedtime.

I got to go to science camp for four weeks! Betts complained non-stop about how unfair it was since she could only go to horse camp for two weeks—in spite of the fact that it cost about ten times as much. This year I really got to focus on what I loved—chemistry. I started building a list of additional things I would need for my chemistry set back home. I knew for a fact that my parents couldn't afford what I wanted, but the camp had a catalog from Edmund Scientific and it had way more stuff than the Sears-Roebuck catalog my original set came from. They promised that we'd each get our own copy of the catalog to take home at the end of the summer. It was fun to see Angela again and we collected and tested soil samples with definitions of what crops would grow best under these soil conditions. We won camp honors for our project.

When I got home from science camp, the first thing my parents did was introduce me to Cary. Cary was a guy my mom worked with in the circulation department at the local newspaper. She was all happy that he came over for dinner the night I got back. All I wanted to do was talk about science camp and here we had a guest who obviously wasn't interested in science.

"So what do you think, Brian? Would you like to be a paper carrier?" What? I think I missed the whole conversation. Be a what?

"Huh?"

"The route for this neighborhood is open. Your mom thought you'd like the opportunity to earn some spending money." Money. Chemistry stuff. Why didn't he say so in the first place?

"Sure. I'd love to."

"I'll meet you here tomorrow morning at five-thirty to show you the route. I'll work with you for two days and you should know where the papers go. Then on Saturday, I'll go with you to collect and make sure your book is up-to-date. From there on, it's all yours."

"Wow!"

Wait. Five-thirty? In the morning? Sure enough, Mom was pounding on my door at five and I was dressed just in time to meet Cary at the door.

"Breakfast when you get home," Mom said as she shoved me out the door.

"We'll use my car today, but when we get back, I want to look at your bike and make sure it's ready for the road. Then tomorrow we'll do the route on our bikes," Cary said as we pulled out. "Roll each newspaper and snap a rubber band around it. I'll point out the houses and you can run to the door."

"Don't we just put them in the box?" That's how our paper always came. But we were at the end of the rural delivery route. Everything north of us was on to-the-door delivery. Crap! This was going to be a lot more work than I thought.

We finished the route in an hour and came back to look at my bike. Cary was pretty good about it and made sure the tires didn't leak and had the right amount of air in them. He checked my brakes and the fit of my seat. He raised it an inch. It had been at the same place since I got the bike when I was eight. Hey! I was growing!